MIAMI — An all-time great basketball player coming off one of his best seasons asks his team to trade him and puts the Miami Heat on a very short list of desired landing spots. Pat Riley spends his Hall of Fame career whale hunting, and suddenly a king-of-the-ocean-sized whale, Kevin Durant, is hunting him.
Imagine that? Yes. Imagine that.
Durant pointing at the Heat and saying, “Let’s play?” That’s Miami being given a road map to a winning Powerball ticket. Doesn’t mean you get it, but it sure does cut down on the odds against.
Things like this rarely happen: A generational player all at once becoming available by free agency or trade. Miami has been in this spot only once before as it approaches its 35th season. That was 12 years ago, almost to the day, when Riley boated LeBron James.
There have been other splash moves, yes. Getting Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway in 1995-96. Shaquille O’Neal arriving on an 18-wheeler diesel truck in 2004. Jimmy Butler acquired in 2019.
But nothing has shot electricity into a franchise and city and made championships a likelihood the way LeBron did and the way K.D. would.
Miami simply cannot let this whale get away.
Utah guard Donovan Mitchell, another point of much speculation regarding Miami, would be a big fish.
But for Riley, 77, the last great catch of an epic career would be Durant, who is on the horizon. Out there.
I know it seems unlikely at the moment to happen. There is zero doubt Miami is interested in trading for Durant, but great doubt it is willing to give as much as the Nets demand.
I still believe it could happen, though. There is time.
The Brooklyn Nets are waiting things out, and why shouldn’t they? Like they have any real choice? The NBA season is still three months away. To appear too anxious to make a deal would convey the panic surely vibrating through the front office these days over Durant.
Durant asking to be traded, that’s akin to a demand when a player of that stature is doing the asking. Fellow Nets star Kyrie Irving also wants out.
Brooklyn has let it be known it could keep and not trade both players, but that’s an obvious last resort if no offers are right, and for now a smokescreen to agitate the marketplace.
Irving seems L.A.-bound, with the Lakers interested, the feeling mutual, and the very same LeBron reportedly doing what he does best — using his leverage — to make his signing a two-year extension as soon as Aug. 4 contingent on having Irving as a teammate.
Durant is when it gets interesting.
And where the Heat come in, along with Phoenix, also on Durant’s short list of desired landing spots, and any other team willing to dare a seat at this highest-stakes table.
The Utah-Minnesota megatrade for Rudy Gobert surely increased the already steep price Brooklyn would demand for Durant, and thus delayed the whole process.
The Timberwolves got an All-Star center, but the Jazz got five players and four first-round draft picks, winning the deal in a consensus rout. I’m surprised Minnesota didn’t have to throw in the Mall of the Americas and its portion of Lake Superior.
Not to overly credit Jazz minority part-owner Dwayne Wade in the pick-pocketing of the Wolves, but it sure would be odd irony if the Heat’s all-time most beloved player had a hand in driving up the cost for Miami to land Durant.
K.D. said he would want to join a title-ready Heat squad that would keep Butler, Bam Adebayo and Kyle Lowry to surround him with.
Two out of three ain’t bad, right?
Lowry, Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson to Brooklyn in exchange for Durant, as a starting point, would fit the NBA’s contractual requirements for a trade. The Nets want All-Star talent in return. Lowry has been an All-Star. Herro is reigning NBA Sixth Man of the Year whom the Nets may see as a star-in-waiting.
Surely Miami would have to add at least two and perhaps three of its available future first-round drafts picks.
If the Nets still wanted more, I might just give it. Max Strus, maybe? Or new top pick Nikola Jovic?
Need Miami to throw in the kitchen sink, too? Filled with champagne? Done.
You get what you pay for, and Durant, though 33, would join Butler and Adebayo to give Miami a championship-caliber team for at least the next several years.
“But he’ll be 34 in September!”
That’s true. So is this. He’s coming off a season in which he averaged 29.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, a career-high 6.4 assists and shot 38.3% on 3-pointers.
Maybe it’s a deal-breaker if Brooklyn insisted on Butler or Adebayo as part of the deal. That I might see.
But anybody else, everybody else, should be fair game to get Durant.
The NBA East is a hard road. Miami finishing with the conference’s best regular-season record, and falling one win shy of reaching the NBA Finals does not assure that “running to back,” standing pat, will do much for the Heat.
Milwaukee and Giannis Antetokounmpo and Philadelphia with Joel Embiid are still formidable. Boston, which eliminated the Heat from the playoffs, got better with the Malcolm Brogdon signing.
Miami, meantime, has had a whisper of a postseason thus far, one Bleacher Report graded a C-minus. Losing free agent P.J. Tucker to Philly offset the re-signing of Victor Oladipo, Caleb Martin and others in the rotation players-but-not difference-makers category.
Kevin Durant is a difference-maker in every sense.
The whale is out there. From his office window Riley can see him in the distance off Biscayne Bay, waiting.
The journey to get him would be long and costly.
And worth it.
